


a thousand paper cranes

by faerie_ground



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: F/M, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Road Trip, background richie/eddie and beverly/ben, explicit mention of nightmares and canon typical violence, post It Chapter Two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26580283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faerie_ground/pseuds/faerie_ground
Summary: Months after Neibolt, Mike Hanlon attempts to make his way in a world where loneliness is not an option for him anymore- featuring an ill-fated road trip, a thousand paper cranes and bad endings.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	a thousand paper cranes

**Author's Note:**

> tw for ptsd mention, explicit description of night terrors and its consequences (etc: vomiting, dry-heaving), mention of canon-typical violence

Mike has to google it, finding a crafts shop nestled into the corner of the street right smack in the middle of Louisiana, past a long and winding dirt road and the crumbling farmhouses relics of a time long past. The air is hot, humid, sticking to the back of his neck like an unwieldy parasite as he pushes the door of the shop open to the sound of the bell tinkling above.

He finds the origami paper quickly enough and has a momentary breakdown about what Bill’s favourite colour even is- he had never thought to ask him. Twenty seven years of following every single footstep of his like a dedicated, most definitely creepy stalker, three months of more than a few states traversed with Bill’s laughter now echoing in his ears like a shadow that trails after him, and this is what stumps him. It takes ten minutes, but he finally settles on light green.

The bored teenage boy at the counter chews on a stick of gum as he rings up the purchase, rolling his eyes when the machine jams. “Hot weather,” Mike offers.

“Well,” the boy says, forcing the counter open with a violence that makes Mike jerk, even after all these months, “that’s Louisiana for you.” The conversation ends there.

Mike’s forced to turn on the aircon when he’s back inside the car, blowing out a breath as he leans his forehead against the glass. He’ll stay for a week, he decides- he needs to find a motel, and then he needs to figure out how to get back ho- get back to LA. Starting out on a road trip on a librarian’s admittedly meagre salary had been absolutely nuts and his friends did help, chipping in despite Mike’s loud protests, but now Mike knows that he’s running on fumes and prayers. Every journey has its end, and Mike’s hurtling towards his.

He ends up finding a motel wedged between a sandwich shop and a convenience store about a street down from where he’d bought the origami paper. Dinner consists of takeout from McDonalds that he sneaks past the beady eyed owner, and he holes himself up inside the room, tearing open the packet and letting the paper spill out on the bed.

Mike had been afraid, that he’d forgotten how. That the memories of his grandfather teaching him how to make the origami had faded away from the lobes of his brain in the years that had followed, that in the horrors of Pennywise and losing everyone and falling prisoner to a town that had gotten its claws inside of him, wrist deep, he’d let the knowledge slip through his fingers like quicksand. There’s something that feels a lot like apprehension coursing through him and turning his limbs numb as he sits on the bed for a minute, staring at the paper in front of him.

“Get on with it, Hanlon,” Mike tells himself firmly, before picking up the paper. He exhales through his nose and starts folding, refusing to let himself stop until a shoddily formed crane is sitting on his palm. It will get better with practice, he knows, but for a while he’s absurdly grateful. Of all the things Derry had taken from him, at least it hadn’t been this.

*

“Where are you?” Bill asks without preamble, the second Mike picks up.

Mike blinks, confused as he sits with his eggs and toast in front of him, frankly unappetizing in the shitty diner he’d found entirely by chance. He’s been making do with a map and a horrible radio system for company which crackles whenever the car passes by a thicket of trees. “Still in Massachusetts. Just left, actually, but I was hungry so I stopped to eat.” There’s a silence on the other end of the phone, thick and weighted. “Bill?”

Bill doesn’t answer for a while, and as he waits Mike draws him up from memory- worrying at his bottom lip, the pensive frown driving a deep furrow between his eyebrows. It’s been weeks since he’s actually seen Bill, laid his eyes on the lines of his face and the crinkles that lie in the corners of his eyes and yet, he thinks, he can draw the sight up by memory if he has to. The silence drags on, and Mike tenses, feeling the old fear drag its claws deeper into him again. “Bill, are you- is it-”

“No, no, it’s not back,” Bill rushes to assure him. “It’s- well. The c-c-court date was today.”

It’s not like Mike hadn’t known that Bill had been in the middle of a tumultuous divorce with his wife- for one, it was all the rage in the papers, headlines and reporters speculating on what could have possibly gone wrong with the handsome, dashing author and his equally beautiful actress of a wife. For another, the rest of their friends have been tip toeing around the topic in a manner that Bill has informed Mike distresses him greatly. “Beverly’s splitting from Connor, too,” Bill had said over the phone the week before, clearly annoyed. There had been a shuffle and a muted curse from his side of the call- probably twisting on his side and accidentally hurting himself trying to get the covers beneath him straightened out- before Bill continues, “So is Eddie from Myra. What’s so- so d-d-different about me?”

For all his brains, showing through in the way he crafts horror stories so magnificently, Bill had never grasped solidly at the fact that he had been and will always be the de-facto gang leader. Never mind that Mike had been the one to bring them back to Derry, find out who or what Pennywise was- there was just something about Bill that made you look up to him, follow his lead and listen to whatever he had to say. It had been respect for the other losers, a little bit of hero worship at times, but for Mike it had always been more. He doesn’t tell Bill that, though- it’s likely going to do nothing but make Bill splutter even more and make up an excuse to cut the call short. Instead, he says, “they’ll get over it soon.”

Now, Mike says awkwardly, “Oh. Are you- are you fine?” _You idiot, Mike, he obviously wouldn’t have called you if he was fine,_ he immediately thinks, but surprisingly enough, Bill laughs- a surprised huff of soft laughter, the kind of sound that makes Mike’s heart stutter in his chest, make the truth he’s known for twenty seven years ingratiate itself even more firmly beneath his skin.

“No, I don’t think I am,” Bill says, but his voice is lighter than it’s been in weeks. “Actually, I- I booked a f-f-f-” he lets out a growl and a curse, and Mike can picture him just so- clenching his eyes shut, the knuckles of his hand white around his phone.

Mike waits, and Bill exhales before continuing, “booked a flight to Boston. It’s- can you- it’s a lot to ask, but-”

“Of course,” Mike says, heart thundering. They had discussed it, obviously, Bill bemoaning the fact that his commitments in LA prevented him from joining Mike on his merry trip around the US of A but Mike had never expected him to be serious- never expected Bill to want to join him, sit beside him in that shitty little metal can and listen to the radio crackling with feed every hundred metres. He’s wanted it for so long, the fantasy of travelling the country with Bill by his side, talking about books and old myths and what have you face to face instead of just over the phone that he finds he’s at a loss for words when handed it on a silver platter, gift-wrapped and ready to go. “I’ll pick you up from the airport, then. When-”

“Half past seven,” Bill says, the sheer relief evident in his voice. Mike wants to tell him that he’s always going to come for him, that he shouldn’t ever feel relief that Mike’s not hanging him to dry because the thought of leaving him alone is unfathomable, to be discarded of as soon as it even tries to take form in his mind but the words die in his throat, sour. “See you then, Mikey.” A beat, and then- “Love you.”

“Love you too,” Mike rushes out, half drunk on the sight of Bill’s smile in his mind, lovely and cherished.

It turns out that Bill’s flight has been delayed by two hours and Mike falls asleep in the car waiting, jumping to immediate wakefulness and an awful crick in his neck when there’s a knock on the side of the door. He turns and sees Bill wave at him, one hand on a suitcase and an easy, effusive smile spreading over his face, sleeves rolled up to his elbow. He looks just as beautiful as the memories stored away in the recesses of Mike’s brain, taken out at night and looked over like fine pieces of china.

“That looked like it hurt,” Bill says, when he’s finally sliding in after Mike unlocks the door, profusely apologising. “No, no- it’s fine- honestly, I was only waiting for a second.”

“I don’t want to be- I’m rubbish at hospitality,” Mike says, embarrassed. The dredges of sleep haven’t left him yet, and coupled with the bad crick in his neck it serves to make the humiliation on his neck burn, bright and hot.

“We’ll be good as long as you don’t drug me again,” Bill says solemnly, blue eyes glinting merrily in the dark, and when Mike stiffens he lets out a full-bellied laugh, hunching over with the force of it. The sight shouldn’t be as endearing as it is and Mike finds himself reluctantly smiling too, the burn from his neck easing away bit by bit. “Too soon?”

“I should have never picked you up, asshole,” Mike says sourly but he’s unable to fully suppress his smile, turning the key in the ignition. “Where to, then?”

“Anywhere you wanna go, man,” Bill says, his eyes soft and smile bright as the moon that’s hanging low in the night sky, and Mike yet again, is unable to hide his flush for the second time in as many minutes.

*

When Mike has nightmares of the fire and his parents’ charred bodies, the screams of them echoing in his ears for the fifth day in a row his grandfather takes him down to the dining table, sighing as he makes them both a hot chocolate.

“Sorry,” Mike had mumbled, his hands wrapped around the mug as his grandfather just waves his hand airily, dismissing the apology. “You lost your family, boy,” he replies, his voice gruff and unconcerned. Anyone else, they would have been up in arms over a ward in their care waking up a dozen times in a row, screaming and crying and hiccupping over a buildup of snot in their nose. Not Mike’s grandfather, though, who had the constitution of an overseer, that air about him that made him look like someone who knew how everything was going to turn out. It was strangely comforting.

“It is not a weakness,” his grandfather says coarsely, taking a sip from his own hot chocolate, “to admit that you miss them. We all miss the ones we lose.”

Mike thinks of commenting that this is a damn sight more than just a loss. It’s an injustice, for the fire to go uninvestigated, for the white folk of the town to cast aspersions on his parents- both of whom he knew to be good, honest people- for him to go to school every day and deal with the reviled, judgemental and yet pitiful looks from everyone around him.

“Do you miss Grandma?” he says instead, more to be polite than anything else.

“Everyday, kiddo,” his grandfather responds, leaning back with a sorrowful look in his eyes. “In fact-” he stands up suddenly with a groan, and makes his way over to a nondescript cabinet in the corner. He takes something out of it before closing it again. When he makes his way back to the table, Mike cranes his neck to take a look at what he’s holding and stares.

“There is an old Japanese myth,” his grandfather says, holding the slightly squashed but no less pristine paper crane out and watching as Mike takes it in his hands, cradling it gently, “that if you make a thousand paper cranes you are granted one wish that will come true. I used it to propose to your gran, I did- made a thousand paper cranes, said my wish was for her to marry me. She started crying so hard I thought I’d screwed up somehow, said I didn’t have to make a wish for it to come true.”

Mike smiles in spite of himself as he turns the paper crane over in his hands. It’s an awfully romantic story, the kind that makes you have cavities as you think about it later on. “Can you show me how to make a paper crane?” he asks before he loses his nerve. His grandfather, not a particularly expressive man by any means, smiles at him for that.

He tells Bill the same story months later as they dangle their feet over the cropping at the quarry, having biked together to the quarry. “That’s really s-s-sweet,” Bill says wistfully, waving his legs back and forth with his hair ruffling in the light breeze.

“Do you believe in it, then?” Mike asks, curious.

“S-s-sure I do,” Bill says easily. “We need things to believe in. Doesn’t matter if they’re not true, they bring hope.” It’s an eerily wise statement, that makes Mike acknowledge for the thousandth time why everyone looks up to Bill, why the moniker Big Bill exists. “Would you do something like that, too? For someone you l-l-l-love?”

“Seems like a lot of hard work, if I’m being honest,” Mike says truthfully. “Maybe if I really, really wanted to.”

*

They’re in a deli in New York when Bill kisses him for the first time.

It’s not unexpected, not totally- the drive to New York had been full of lingering touches, Bill’s scorching eyes on him as he’d fiddled with the wheel and talked his ass off about books and the history of each landmark that passed them by, the dying stereo system spluttering out the selection of music Bill had decided to force upon it. “If you’re gonna do all the driving, I wanna choose what music to play,” Bill had announced, waving the aux cord with his eyes honest to god _twinkling,_ and Mike hadn’t found it in himself to resist.

Maybe he should have. There’s a sense of an otherworldliness in Bill’s touches, when he reaches over to brush his knuckles against Mike’s knee on the way to fiddle with the stereo system yet again or when he decides to card his fingers through Mike’s hair while in the midst of telling him ideas for his new book, attempting to straighten out the tight curls that have grown out in their days on the road. Dropping his hand on Bill’s thigh or tucking an errant graying curl behind his ear feels forbidden, like snatching that plate of cookies off the table when he’d been expressly forbidden from doing so. Bill leans over the table to kiss him while he’s in the middle of wondering if the Big Apple would still be open, a quick press of the lips that feels unerringly soft and left hand over his wrist in a gentling touch, and Mike forgets how to breath, stiffening up and turning to stone.

It has Bill withdrawing immediately, eyes wide as he stares at Mike in consternation, a weird mix of fear and dismay and betrayal. “I- s-s-sorry,” he says, the stammer back in the face of Mike’s apparent rejection. “I- I t-t-thought-”

“No, _no,”_ Mike says emphatically, his voice fierce, as he finally moves and leans over the table to kiss Bill, again. The deli is mostly empty save for a gaggle of schoolgirls three tables over who are clearly giggling at them, two old men seated opposite each other in a booth and attempting to figure out a path that they should have finished carving years ago. Bill responds, though, eager and excited with his lips moving in a manner that has Mike’s heart tripping over itself. When they finally break apart his bottom lip is red, shining with spittle in a way that has Mike suddenly wishing his camera was nearby so that he could take a picture- just for posterity. “Sorry,” Mike breathes, flipping his hand on the table over and gripping Bill’s, tight and vice-like. Where Bill is gentle, unassuming, Mike finds himself going over the limit often, grabbing with both hands tightly and refusing to let go. That’s what, he thinks, living through twenty seven years of being forgotten by your only friends in the world will do to you. “I’m bad at this. You’ll have to be patient with me.”

“Oh, I think you’re doing just fine,” Bill says easily, beaming at him with a touch of pink in his cheeks. He’s iridescent and unfairly so beneath the yellow light of the deli, sleeves of his plaid button-down rolled up to his elbows. “As fine as you could p-p-possibly be doing.”

There’s something in those words that makes Mike swallow, suddenly aware of what the other man must think of him. “If you’re- doing this out of pity-”

Bill reels back, shocked. “N-n-never,” he promises, his eyes widening again as he squeezes Mike’s hand back. “Don’t you know, Mike? I’ve been absolutely gone for you, I think, ever since I stepped back into Derry- just took me this long to realise it.” There’s a sorrow to his smile, a hint of the guilt that Mike sees in no one but Bill. It’s always felt as if Bill’s the only one who grieved for the loneliness of the years that had passed them by, had understood what Mike had suffered, holed up in that library in Derry and poring over every single piece of information he could find on Pennywise.

“I don’t regret it,” Mike blurts out, entangling his fingers with Bill’s on the surface of the table. “If it’s brought us here- I don’t regret it at all.” Bill’s lips part, his face filling with flattered delight and Mike can’t help but lean over the table to kiss him again, mouth pressed to the red of his bottom lip.

“Want to go to the Big Apple? We can make it, if we hurry,” Bill murmurs as the schoolgirls titter again, his hand scraping over the side of Mike’s face with his fingers stroking lines into the fine hairs of his stubble, and Mike’s helpless to do anything but nod.

*

He’s on his hundredth paper crane, sitting on a bench in a park a few streets down from the motel when his phone rings. Mike looks at the caller, and then nearly drops it when he realizes that it’s Bev.

“Bev,” he says as he picks it up, gathering the paper and the cranes in his lap to do so. There’s a group of kids playing with a ball on the grass across from him and they keep sneaking glances at the cranes on his lap with no small amount of fascination, faces full of wide-eyed curiosity and wonder. Mike has no idea how he’d explain it, if they ever pick up the courage to come over and ask. How can one explain _I’m trying to make a big, romantic gesture for the love of my life, whom I drove away because I was a complete idiot?_ “Is everything- is everything alright?”

“Oh, of course,” Bev says through the phone, her voice tinny but no less pleasant. It’s almost carefully pleasant, the pitch at just the right amount of tone with zero inflection and with a sinking heart, Mike realizes what it is, exactly, that she’s called him for. “Everything’s dandy, really- did you, um, did you see the ultrasound pictures I sent? In the chat?”

Mike hasn’t opened the losers chat in weeks. Not since he’d dropped Bill off at the airport in Florida, Bill looking at him with those eyes, sorrowful and disappointed, before he’d pressed a kiss to the corner of his lips and told him he would wait, for as long as Mike would need him to. Not since he’d watched Bill walk to the departure gates and away from him, violently tamping down the urge to run after him, grab the bags from him and beg him to stay. Not since- “I’m sorry,” Mike apologises, clenching his fingers so hard on the phone he fancies hearing a crack. “I didn’t really- I’m really sorry, Bev, I’m so stupid-”

“I figured, it’s alright,” Bev says, a hint of humour in her voice. It makes Mike feel even worse. Derry had ruined whatever little he’d had with Bill, and now it’s well on its way to ruining his friendships, too. It’s as if the town has seeped into every fibre of his cells, unwilling to leave. “It’s okay, Mikey, really.”

“I’ll open the chat now,” Mike says, subdued.

“I’m still on the phone with you,” Bev says, amused. There’s a pause, during which Mike hears the clatter of spoons and a murmur in the background- Ben, then, they’d planned this attack together- before she continues, “I just wanted to- Mike, are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Mike asks, a non answer to a question, as he balances the phone between his ear and shoulder and starts making the hundredth and first crane. The kids across from him are sneaking even more glances at him now, eyes full of fascinated interest. He considers waving at them and decides against it.

“Mike,” Bev sighs, exasperated. “Don’t fuck around. You and Bill went from being so active in the chat together to- you know.”

Yeah, Mike thinks, his heart squeezing like a tight vice, he knows. He remembers New York, North Carolina, Florida. He remembers the kisses traded in each of those cities, the thousands of pictures sent to the chat of Bill smiling, him with ice cream all over his face, both of them with their faces pressed together against the back drop of sunny trees and blue skies and houses faded light red with age and weather and time. He remembers taking picture after picture of Bill, just Bill- Bill laughing, Bill eating, Bill frowning up at the sun. He remembers Bill taking the phone from him whilst yelling at him playfully, remembers Bill staring at him sometimes with this open, dumfounded look in his eyes like he just couldn’t believe his luck, remembers Bill pressing kisses to his clothed shoulder and his neck and his cheeks like he just can’t help himself. He remembers going from all of that to the glaring silence from Bill in the chat, refusing to check his messages because it had gotten him in the gut like a painful stab wound left open, bleeding and throbbing.

The other losers had probed, because it had been in their nature. Richie had called and dithered for a full half an hour discussing Eddie’s physio routine before tentatively asking if anything had happened. Ben, still living in the age of emails, had sent an invite out to the fancy mansion that make for his and Bev’s home turf. Even Patty Blum had called, concerned. He’d kept it o himself, though, ashamed and heartsick and guilty- well, until now, that is.

“I fucked up,” Mike says, exhausted, “I kept- I couldn’t stop thinking about Derry. It was affecting him, so I asked him to leave. And he did.”

The silence from Bev’s end is heavy and accusatory. An exhale that sounds like a reprimand, that leaves Mike wincing, before she says, “Well- have you tried apologizing?”

“I can’t do it over the phone,” Mike says helplessly. “He- he’s not- he doesn’t deserve that.” How can he put this into words, that Bill is far too important to him? He needs to show Bill he is worthy. That had been the whole reason for their separation- Mike convinced he was wearing Bill down, Bill convinced that Mike was far more than he actually was. Crippling self doubt had never been something that Mike had struggled with but in the wake of leaving Derry, the nightmares, the panic attacks he’d get after passing the most random things by- a flash of orange in the window, a balloon seller- it’s sometimes all he has.

Bill had been good at chasing it away. Unfortunately for them both, Mike had been equally as good at chasing away the things that were good for him.

“I have to be there in person,” Mike settles on saying. “I have to show him- I have to make him want me back.”

“Oh, Mike,” Bev says, her voice sorrowful. “He’d want you back regardless. You forget- I’ve seen the pictures, you know. I’ve seen how he looks at you.”

That’s half the problem, too- Mike knows how Bill looks at him, like he’s the second coming of Christ and the best thing since sliced bread in one. He does not feel deserving the adoration Bill lobs his way, not after the phone call and the lies in Derry, not after twenty years living on the burial ground that is Derry. He has to make these cranes, has to feel worthy of how Bill looks at him and sees him and loves him. Wishes are not a guaranteed thing, but he thinks about what Bill had said, all those years ago- that they bring hope. Maybe all he’d need is these one thousand paper cranes, and the hope that they would make him believe he’s worthy of all that Bill feels for him.

“Tell me how the pregnancy’s going,” Mike says abruptly, changing tack. “How’s the baby? How’s Ben, is he freaking out like Richie said he would?”

He can tell that Bev’s aware of the subject change, but Bev doesn’t press and goes along with it. They talk for a bit more, Bev relating tales about how Ben’s been sweetly protective of her, how he had come home the other day with a bunch of flowers in one hand and tickets for a play in the other. When the call’s over and he’s getting ready to leave, one of the kids come running up to him. She’s tiny, tight ringlet curls in two buns at either side of her head and grass stains all over her skirt.

“That’s a lot of cranes, mister,” she says shyly, pointing at the paper cranes on his lap.

He inspects her for a bit, how her eyes seem large for her face and her shirt hangs a little off her shoulder, before he offers a spare piece of paper to her and says, “I can teach you how to make one, if you want.”

Her eyes light up and Mike exhales, the strange tension leaving his body in an instant. For a second, he thinks of the possibility of having a daughter like her with Bill, before he instantly shuts the possibility down. For a man like him, he can’t allow himself the luxury to dream.

“Here,” Mike says gently, folding the paper. “You bend it just so…”

*

Eddie falls into a coma after they get him to the local Derry hospital, shirt soaked through with blood as Richie had screamed at doctors to attend to him, white beneath the blood on him. After the first week or so Bev and Ben have to go back, promising to be in touch while they sort out the details of Bev’s divorce. Mike had expected Bill to leave too but he doesn’t, choosing to stay in Derry instead for two more weeks.

“That’s all my agent’s willing to g-g-give me,” Bill says ruefully, as they sit outside the hospital room. He’s clad in a jumper today that hangs from his shoulders, slightly, baggy on his frame in the aftermath of the frankly monstrous few days they’ve had. They’ve all changed slightly, after the fight in that rickety old house. Richie is evidence enough of that, the shadows beneath his eyes stark and frightening, betraying the intense worry he must be feeling. Mike knows that if it had been Bill in that hospital bed, he’d be feeling the exact same way. “But until then-”

“You’re a good friend to him,” Mike says. “To stay and give him company.”

“You are too,” Bill says pointedly, raising an eyebrow. Mike doesn’t know what to say to that so they just sit in silence for a while, Bill sipping from his hospital grade shitty coffee and Mike’s own cup left abandoned on the seat next to him. They’d attempted to keep Richie company for the first few days but the weight of his anguish, physically intangible but overpowering, had become too great to bear. Mike remembers walking into the hospital room once, after getting cheap takeout for all of them, to see Richie sobbing into Bill’s shirt and murmuring something nonsensically. He’d met Bill’s eyes over the top of his head and the look in them- shuttered, raw- had made Mike swallow roughly, dropping the takeout on a far table before laying a hand on Richie’s back in what he’d hoped was a comforting touch.

Having friends is something that feels old and yet new to him.

“You know, don’t think I didn’t n-n-notice that,” Bill says suddenly, and Mike looks up to see Bill staring at him. He feels pinned, restless and fidgety under his gaze, like a butterfly underneath a telescope. “In Neibolt, not running f-f-from-”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bill,” Mike lies.

“Bullshit,” Bill snaps, fierce. “I- you were going to let yourself _die?”_

“I led all of you,” Mike retorts, keeping his voice low, “like lambs to slaughter. It doesn’t matter what I was going to let myself do. I deserved _that_ , instead of Eddie.” Eddie, who had been terrified from the start, who didn’t even want to fight Pennywise, who was stabbed in the cheek and then almost left to die in the sewers beneath the Neibolt house if Richie hadn’t been so fucking stubborn.

Bill’s gazing at him piercingly, and then he says, his voice carefully wiped blank. “Is this about the ritual?”

“Of course it’s about the ritual!” Mike explodes. “I _knew_ what I was doing when I scratched that side out, and I didn’t care because I’ve spent so long wanting to save us, wanting _it_ gone-” he cuts himself off, biting down on his bottom lip and glaring at his own hands, wringing themselves on his lap. He feels wretched, his heart thumping as he’s sure that any minute now, Bill’s gonna stomp up and leave, declare him a lost cause or worse still- tell him he’s right.

Bill is quiet, unnervingly so. It’s even more eerie in the empty hallway of the hospital, sparse except for a few stragglers waiting around for some reason or the other. “Do you want to know what I think?” Bill asks, after more than a few seconds.

“Always,” Mike exhales.

“I was- really mad at you,” Bill says, soft. Mike does not dare to look up, squeezing his fingers tight together. “But I know why you did it- I know why now. You acted exactly like someone whose friends abandoned him to do what they should have been doing together. Mikey, _look_ at me.”

Mike looks up, swallowing roughly. Bill doesn’t look angry, or upset or even god forbid, disappointed. He looks anxious instead, the crinkles around his eyes deep with worry, his lips pressed tight together. The sensation of having someone else worried for him- that’s not something Mike is used to. He doesn’t think he ever will be.

“You did your best,” Bill whispers. “You’re braver than all of us put together. You’re a goddamned _hero,_ Mikey.”

The words, embarrassingly, make Mike tear up, and he swipes the back of his hand across his eyes, laughing shakily. “God, I’m sorry,” he blurts out. “I’m just-”

“You terrified me,” Bill says quietly. “I don’t want to see you like that- unmoving, staring up at-at- waiting to d-d-d-die. Promise me, Mikey. You won’t ever do something like that again.”

Promises are not worth much. Mike remembers making Bill promise something similar to him- both of them, thirteen and knobby kneed, Bill pressing a scraggly kiss to his cheek before whispering that he won’t leave like the others.

The Denbroughs had carted him away one week later. Mike had stopped believing in the power of promises after that.

“I promise,” Mike says anyway, smiling tremulously at him. Bill smiles back, tentative but real, and Mike feels that unsaid hint of something- the very something he sees in Richie’s eyes when he looks at Eddie, prone and out cold in the hospital bed- bloom in his chest, unfurl and blossom.

*

Mike gets three sorts of nightmares.

The first type of nightmare is run-of-the-mill, pretty ordinary by his standards. He’s back in the burning house, separated from his parents by a glass panel, watching as his parents burn to a crisp. He can do nothing but watch as their skin turns pink and then red and then black, their eyeballs melting in a grotesque pit of blood and flesh, their clothes charring and flaking off into little tatters that flutter in the wind. No matter what he does- banging his fists against the wall, screaming until it feels like his throat has started to bleed, kicking at the panel until he’s sure he can feel his toes throb, that if he pries off his shoes he’ll find bloodied stubs of what used to be flesh and bone- the glass panel does not give. The nightmare ends only when his parents are nothing but ash on the ground, and he wakes up with a jolt and a sob permanently lodged in his throat. It takes a good few hours- maybe a smoke or two, never in front of Bill if he can help it- til he falls back asleep again.

The second nightmare is slightly worse. He’s running through the streets of Derry, the other losers by his side. They’re being chased by It, and there’s a sense of sharp, acrid fear and urgency in the air. It is only when they reach the end of the street that he realises the others are all gone- and so, apparently, is It. Mike starts running frantically through the abandoned streets of Derry, the empty roads and papers flying about and can’t find them, not even after barging in every empty shop and breaking into every house. The fear of not finding his friends- of the worst coming to pass- overtakes him and he’s bending over, breaths coming in quickened gasps, and he can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe-  
  
  


Mike always wakes with a shout and he has to dash for the loo, bending over the toilet seat and dry heaving. Nothing actually comes up, and he keeps the doors locked against Bill’s frantic knocks, waiting until Bill is heaving a frustrated sigh and leaving to quietly unlock the door and slip out into the balcony, sitting on an armchair with a glass of water and one of Bill’s books in his hand. He reads until the first rays of sunlight spill out into the hotel room, Bill’s familiar winding descriptions and thoughtful epithets embracing him and calming his stuttering heart rate like a patronising, welcome embrace. Bill always ends up joining him an hour or so after he heads out into the balcony, shoving his hand aside to gingerly place himself on his lap, and laying his head on his shoulder before falling back into a deep sleep. Mike suspects that Bill waits, til he’s gauged that Mike probably would welcome him into his arms. The thought is galling, because Mike never wanted Bill to realise that there would be times he would turn Bill away- not because he didn’t love Bill, never because of that, but because he didn’t want Bill to see him and the ever-present fear in his eyes.

The third nightmare is the worst. In this one it’s Bill who gets caught, Bill who he can’t save. Bill gets trapped in the deadlights and Mike is unable to snap him out of it. He can’t do anything but stand by helplessly and scream as Bill gets pierced by Pennywise’s pincers, as Bill gets his extremities bitten off and chewed by Pennywise piece by piece. Bill’s always staring at him, eyes muddied and pupils blown wide with the sort of bone-chilling, paralysing terror that makes Mike feel cold, unable to move or help as he finds himself frozen with the sort of fear he’s only used to feeling in Derry.

The fallout is significantly worse. Mike ends up vomiting the second he wakes up, yanking the trashcan towards himself and feeling the bile scorch a blazing trail up his throat. Bill is always awake in an instant, one step behind him and smoothing a hand over his back, waiting patiently to the side with a glass of water and projecting a sense of worry-anxiety-fear that feels so strong Mike ends up retching even more because of it. In the wake of the images of a dead Bill, a decaying, rotting Bill, an accusing, zombified Bill scored into the depths of his brain he feels practically stiff with fear, frozen and trembling so finitely he’s unable to support his own weight. Try as he might, he can’t shake the images out of his head of Bill, dead with his tongue lolling out and blood gushing out of the wound on his chest, sporting gaping, jagged and torn holes where his arms are supposed to be. The fear turns him resentful, shoving Bill’s hand away from him as he staggers away from the bathroom, washing his mouth off the taste of pungent vomit. These nights are the worst, not even Bill’s books distracting him as he sits in the balcony, staring at absolutely nothing and thinking about how his very soul, the core of him feels irreparably damaged by Derry and by Pennywise. Survival feels bleak, on these days- a hollow victory, when there are ghosts that cling to him, hideous forms of shadows.

Bill broaches the topic with him one day, hesitant and voice unsure. They’d been the entire day before that in Disneyland- going on rides together, feeding each other cotton candy and popping into gift shops to buy matching Mickey Mouse hats. The park had been teeming with both tourists and the locale, crowded to the point of suffocation but it hadn’t bothered Bill- grinning, he’d posed next to the fountain near the entrance and had almost toppled over. They’d chosen to have lunch at an overpriced, uncomfortably expensive restaurant, Bill snatching the receipt before Mike could have a chance to snatch it away. “We did let you pick up the bill at the Jade Orient,” he had pointed out, when Mike had protested. “This is an apology.” There’s something deeper in his eyes at that, a recognition of a sort and Mike had subsided, feeling strangely mollified. They’d taken a joint picture in front of the castle, sending it to the chat with the rest of the losers. Richie had responded within a split second, proclaiming that they looked very stupid with Mickey Mouse ears on their head.

The day had been full of laughter and joy, full of Bill’s twinkling smile and rich, bone-deep and low laughter, his greying hair shining in the light, full of Bill pressing kisses to his cheek and nose and lips and full of pictures to be frozen in time forever, memories of them hesitantly in love. The night had been a different animal altogether, Mike once again rushing to the toilet after envisioning Bill dying in his arms in the most horribly graphic manner possible. The next morning, Bill had grasped his hand over breakfast in the hotel restaurant and squeezed, eyes large as if he had been trying to minimize the impact of his words. “Have you thought of- seeing someone? About your- night terrors?”

Mike had jerked back, startled. “No,” he had said. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“No, there isn’t,” Bill had said solemnly. “But you’ve been having night terrors every night, Mikey, and that isn’t normal.”

“Nothing about our lives are,” Mike had replied defensively, something in him rising up, churlish and irate. Bill didn’t know what he was saying. Bill was just- just talking out of his ass. “I’m fine, Bill. Leave it alone.”

“I won’t, not when you’re in pain and there’s nothing I can do to help you,” Bill insists. That had been his mistake, pushing where Mike had wanted to be left alone. Mike had always envisioned himself as a rock, steadfast and strong especially for Bill, and having the illusion crumble just then wasn’t something he particularly wanted. “I’m h-h-helping in the only way I know how. Mikey, please-”

They had been shattering into little pieces, right before their very eyes. Mike takes in the bags beneath Bill’s eyes, the worry in the crinkles in the corners of them, the way his knuckles stand out white on the tabletop and something in him breaks like fine china.

“You should leave tomorrow,” Mike had said softly. The words had landed like bullets, or stones thrown with the gracelessness of the wicked, and Bill had simply stared back, eyes wide and blank from shock.

“You don’t mean that,” Bill had laughed uneasily after a while, his eyes turning hooded from the hurt that Mike had helped to put there. It shields him from seeing how Mike is stiff with regret from the words falling out of his mouth, unbidden. _Don’t listen to me,_ Mike wants to scream. _Please love me despite this._ “Mikey, come on-”

“I think- it’s not helping us, either of us,” Mike says instead, heartsore and feeling his hands tremble as he folds them in his lap. He fixes his gaze somewhere to the left of Bill’s face, avoiding looking at him directly. This is- this is what’s best, for both of them. Mike can’t keep subjecting Bill to this, to the pain of waking up everyday to Mike in the balcony, immersed in his own struggles and trauma. This hadn’t been what he’d intended when he’d kissed Bill back in that diner. He’d wanted to be _perfect_ for Bill. “We- we need some time apart.”

Bill opens his mouth, looking clearly furious, and then suddenly deflates, slumping down his chair. “Is that what you w-w-want?”

_No._ “Yes,” Mike says, and that’s the end of it. He’s sending Bill off at the airport in Florida that very night and when they arrive at the gates Bill twists suddenly in his seat, grabbing Mike’s face with both hands and whispering, “Sort yourself out, Mikey. I’ll w-w-wait for you.” Mike exhales at that, leaning his forehead against Bill’s and closing his eyes, breathing in the clean, fresh scent of him. When Bill eventually slides out of the car and walks to departure he doesn’t look back, not even once. Mike considers calling out to him- telling him he regrets it, telling him to stay, telling him he’s sorry and he knows he’s not worth it but _god_ does he want Bill to look at him and find him worthy of the way in which he loves him.

He says none of these things, and he watches Bill- the love of his life, the only love of his life since they were thirteen and riding a bike together to the quarry, laughing and leaning against each other after they thought they’d achieved the impossible and unfathomable- walk away from him, perhaps forever.

*

It’s agonizing, but Mike asks around and finally sells his car off in a dealership in Jacksonville. It’s a small town, cosy and close knit, somehow reminding him of Derry and yet not at the same time. There’s nothing of the eerie superficial film that had stuck to Derry, grimy and sticking to your skin like filth. By all rights, it should be a town that Mike should feel comfortable with settling down in. And yet, Mike thinks dazedly, staring aimlessly out of the window of the office he’s standing in, it’s missing something.

“…should be it, Mr Hanlon. Mr Hanlon?”

Mike’s gaze snaps back to the dealer in front of him, and smiles apologetically. “Sorry, I was- anyway, it’s all done?” He looks out the window again, at the car sitting innocuously outside. It hits him with a pang- this will be the last he’ll see of it, that old thing that’s been stuck with him since Derry. It’s seen more than its fair share of blood and tears.

“Yes, that’s all,” the dealer says, smiling warmly at him. Nice inhabitants too- if he wanted to throw roots down anywhere, now was the time. _You gotta start somewhere, Mikey,_ Bill whispers in his mind, fond and slightly chastising. “You planning to stick around, Mr Hanlon?”

“Gotta be on my flight tomorrow,” Mike says regretfully. A one-way ticket to LA, and a box of five hundred paper cranes sitting in the trunk of the car- strange possessions for anyone to be carrying. Unbidden, he thinks of Bill again- greying hair curling at his temples as he’d smile distractedly at Mike, before returning his gaze back to his laptop. Bill would probably see Mike on his front porch with a box full of useless fucking cranes after he’d refused to talk to him for an entire month, and then throw him out on his ass again. Mike wouldn’t blame him.

“We never mind new travellers,” the dealer insists, and then to Mike’s great surprise, hands him the keys back. “Listen, you’re a good sort. Take her out for one last spin, then get her back to me.”

“You’re awfully trusting,” Mike says pointedly, curling his hand into a fist and feeling the metal cut into his palm. One last spin, and then he’d bid adieu to his one sole companion- besides Bill- of these past few months, forever. There’s a strange lurch in his gut, something that makes his throat grow sore and heavy. “What if I don’t bring it back?”

“You will,” the dealer says, and pats him on the shoulder. “You’re a good kid.”

It’s that, more than anything, that makes Mike feel witless, out of sorts as he drives the car around the town. He eventually stops outside a bookstore, a quaint little shop at the corner of the street that characteristic of this particular town, seems almost too homely to be real. It’s not the painted doors, or the artsy, fanciful manner in which the books are displayed at the window that draws him in, however. Rather, it’s how one of the shelves is labelled- rather ostentatiously, as a matter of fact. Then again, Mike is in no position to judge. Back in Derry, he’d sequestered away two whole shelves, dedicated entirely to the man in question.

“Ah, Bill Denbrough!” one of the sales attendants calls out, as he picks up one of the books in his hands- _Misery,_ which true to form had been an utterly exhilarating, engaging novel but absolutely miserable. Mike wonders what it says about Bill, that all his novels had avoided the closure he’d apparently spent 27 years searching for. He still, he thinks with a jolt, has no idea if Bill has ever found it. Perhaps none of them have, seeing as there’s no user manual on how to spend the rest of your life after you’ve defeated an evil demonic cannibalistic clown from outer space.

If Bill has chosen- or already found- his closure in someone else, none of the paper cranes in the world would give him the time he sorely craves with Bill. The thought leaves a sour taste on his tongue. 

“One of our bestsellers,” the attendant continues, striding over. She has a purple streak in her hair, an ink smudge over her jaw as she comes to lean against one of the bookcases. She looks at home, though, in this wilderness of books and papers. Mike, having spent a good percentage of his life shut away in libraries, can’t say for certain if he relates. God, but does he want to, though- where else can he possibly belong? “People here _love_ his stuff.”

Mike puts _Misery_ back, picking up _Black Rapids_ instead. As bad as _Misery_ had been, _Black Rapids_ had been worse. The protagonist fleeing his hometown after his love interest ended up sacrificing herself for him, the inner circle of friends torn asunder with at least half of them dying and yet again, no proper definitive closure on whether the true evil of the town had been defeated for good. Flipping through the pages Mike wonders how he’d never caught it before- the most morbidly clear manifestation of Bill’s trauma.

“Did you like it?” he asks the attendant, waving the book in his hands.

“I- yeah, of course, who doesn’t,” the girl scoffs, chewing something that seems to be bubblegum, twisting it around in her mouth. “Great book- except for the ending.”

Mike thinks of Bill in the car on the route to Louisiana, eyes red rimmed from the flight and jittery as he’d complained how horrible his flight had been, with the passenger next to him preaching on the awful nature of the ending to his trilogy series about a haunted forest, and has to smile. Bill had suffered the teasing from practically everyone with a strained smile and frozen look except from him- when Mike had teased him about the endings, all he’d gotten in return had been an immeasurably fond look, a soft nudge to his ribs.

“It was just so _lonely_ ,” the girl continues, continuing to chew on her bubblegum. “Makes you think, you know? It ain’t healthy. You know, your friends are there to help you, what else are they gonna do?” She shakes her head as if to dislodge her head of cobwebs, and laughs, half shaky. “Never mind, don’t listen to me, I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

Mike’s freezing, though, staring at the book in his hands. Of course someone would think that, reading Bill’s endings. He’d thought that himself, with how Bill would rip apart each protagonist of each book, never letting them heal, never letting them stay with their friends in harmony.

The damndest thing, though, had been that Mike had related all too well. All those years spent holed up in the library, venturing out on the rare occasion he’d gotten a lead on Pennywise- they’d been heart achingly lonely, sitting at a bar and thinking of wavy brown hair and the kind of piercing eyes he’d never find anywhere else except on that one person who’d promised never to leave him. After a while it had been addictive, the strange isolation that cut you off from the real world. Mike had gotten on for more than two decades without a single person to guide him by. If he’d ever known how to have friends and keep them, he’s forgotten it all. That didn’t mean, though, that he couldn’t relearn it again.

That had been the whole point of Bill coming with him for that road trip. He didn’t have to be by himself anymore.

“I’ll take this, actually,” Mike says, holding the book up. It’s stupid- he already has a earmarked, worn out copy back in his suitcase in the motel room. It had been signed by Bill while they’d been in a diner in South Carolina, strawberry smoothie left forgotten at his elbow as he’d signed his name with a flourish, accompanied by a dozen little symbols of lightning bolts and stars. Mike has spent every day after that tracing the name since, feeling the dried ink beneath the pad of his index finger. He doesn’t need this second copy- it’s wasteful, for one thing.

“You will?” the girl asks, clearly surprised. “Well, glad I ain’t turned you off it, then. It really is a good book.”

“Most definitely is,” Mike says, running a hand over the smooth cover on the back, Bill’s face glaring sternly up at him. “He has a new book coming out, you know. Something tells me the ending for it is gonna be a damn sight better.”

*

He’s just touched down in LA when the messages in the chat with the rest of the losers come back with full force. Grinning to himself, he flags a cab down and tells the driver the address, watching as the driver’s eyebrows climb into his forehead. “He expectin’ you?” the driver asks, as the cab strips out of the driveway of the airport.

“It’s a surprise,” Mike says, leaning his head back against the headrest. The phone won’t let him rest, though, and after a few seconds he heaves a sigh, taking it out and scrolling through the messages. Bev and Ben are hosting a cookout, it seems, on the front lawn of their extremely spacious, extravagant mansion. Eddie’s currently arguing with Richie, _in_ the chat, on the numerous pros and cons of bringing their own food as opposed to ordering in takeout. Bill, he realizes, is completely silent, and his heart lurches. It could mean any number of things.

He types in _I’ll have to bring the food, I can’t trust any of you to actually bring anything with proper flavour,_ and hits send. He waits.

Predictably, there is an instant deluge of responses; they’re all excited and, Mike realizes, his heart warm, they’re all _happy_ to hear from him. It’s not as if Mike had been insecure but the memories of calling them back to where they dearly did not wish to return and then lying to them, basically leading them to their deaths still remain fresh in his mind like new scars, even months after Neibolt. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forgive himself for it, no matter what Bill says.

_Dude, where have you been!!! We all fucking missed you, man!!!_

_MIKE!! Holy fucking shit!_

_Mike! How have you been?_

_Mike, you’re in LA??_

All, except the one he’d wanted to hear from the most. Mike stares at the screen and the messages that pop up continuously, waiting with a sinking heart as Bill doesn’t say anything. Maybe this had been a mistake, he realizes, maybe Bill’s irreparably angry at him, maybe-

The cab reaches Bill’s manor before the three dots pop up, Mike’s phone screen telling him that Bill Denbrough is typing. Almost at once, everyone else stops typing as well. It feels as if the world itself is waiting on bated breath, eagerly anticipating and simultaneously dreading his response. Mike opens his mouth, ready to tell the driver to change the address if necessary. Maybe he’ll stay for the cookout, and then leave again, restless.

He appears to type for an age, the dots appearing and disappearing and reappearing again before a response finally comes when Mike is standing on the front porch of the manor, ready to ring the bell. _Where in LA, Mikey?_

Mike hesitates, wondering if he should really do this right there in the chat they share with all their friends. It’s not as if the other losers hadn’t known that _something_ had went down between them. Mike is under no delusions- he is well aware of the fact that they probably have their own discussions as well, speculations on what had happened to turn Bill into a recluse and Mike into a ghost, never stopping by for a chat.

Then again, Mike thinks, Richie and Eddie have gotten up to worse in the chat. _Open your front door and find out,_ he types, and just before sliding his phone back into his pocket, heart thumping so fast he feels nauseous, he sees Richie respond with an exuberant _GET HIM, HANLON!_ and grins.

He barely gets the time to panic. The door gets yanked open half a second later and Bill’s standing there, phone in his hand and clad in a striped green flannel shirt that looks impossibly soft, hair mussed and eyes wide. He looks impossibly beautiful, and Mike abruptly realizes that none of his imagined visions over the past month spent on the road could possibly do the real thing any justice.

“Mikey,” Bill breathes. He looks gobsmacked, his jaw hanging open like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. Mike had planned this out, this triumphant return to Bill to win him back, and he can’t believe that he’s actually here either.

“Before you say anything,” Mike croaks, and then sets his bags on the porch roughly, tearing open the packet he’d shoved all five hundred of his paper cranes in before continuing, “I- I’m sorry. I’m sorry for pushing you away, that day, and I’m sorry for making you go home, and I- I know I don’t deserve your apologies, or your love, or anything at all-”

“Mikey,” Bill says softly, stepping forward. His phone’s hanging loosely in his hand, lighting up with incessant notifications. The look in his eyes is achingly soft.

“I tried to make a thousand paper cranes,” Mike rushes out, feeling stupid as he stands sleep deprived and jetlagged on the front porch of the man he’s loved since he was thirteen. “I managed five hundred, but I just- I wanted to make a wish.”

Bill’s eyes widen, as the realization dawns slowly on his face. Of all the lost memories, he thinks Bill might have appreciated that one coming back the most. “Wh-what wish?” Bill asks softly.

“That I could be worthy of you again,” Mike says ruefully.

“Mikey,” Bill says, again, and this time his eyes are watery and spilling over, ocean-like. Mike hadn’t returned to make him _cry._ He feels even worse, if that was at all possible, his own eyes welling up as well. “You don’t have to apologise to me. You don’t have to-” his voice trails off, his throat working.

“I love you so much,” Mike whispers, his heart pounding in his throat. “I thought of you every day. I sold my car to get back to you. I’ll see someone about the nightmares, I will- just please, please take me back.”

Bill laughs shakily, swiping his flannel covered wrist across his eyes. “You i-i-idiot,” he says, shoving his phone into his pocket before grabbing onto Mike’s collar, yanking him down for a kiss. It’s rough, demanding and harsh and unforgiving, full of teeth and tongue. It’s the best damn kiss Mike has ever had in his life.

“I n-n-never wanted to leave,” Bill murmurs, pulling away and resting his forehead against Mike’s. He’s on tiptoe, Mike thinks distantly, that can’t be good for his feet. His hands tremble where they clutch at his collar, and Mike slides his hands up, covering his hands with his own. “But I was never a-a-angry with you. Fuck, my st-st-stutter-”

“I’m listening,” Mike says, his fingers skittering dancing lines over Bill’s back. He should have been from the start, should have let Bill help him and never sunk into his own despair.

“I was so w-w-worried for you,” Bill continues, pressing kisses all over Mike’s face like he can’t believe it himself. “Every single day. I _love_ you, with everything I h-h-h-have. You don’t need to prove yourself to me. You just- I want you to _stay.”_

“I still see-” Mike swallows, his tears lodged in his throat like a painful stone. “I still have nightmares. Not just about Neibolt- about the years in Derry, about being so fucking lonely. You were right, about my needing to see someone. I just- I’ve felt so pathetic-”

Bill looks up at him, devotion and love so clear in his eyes it steals Mike’s breath away. “I don’t- I never cared about that,” he says fiercely. “I love you so much, and- and you know, I get nightmares too. I keep dreaming, of you getting pierced by-” he swallows roughly, once, and turns pale again. Mike can’t stop himself, ducking in and stealing a kiss that leaves both of them swaying on their feet.

“We’ll get through this together,” Bill continues fiercely. “I’ll be by your side, every step of the way.” His eyes drift to the packet still clenched within Mike’s fingers and turned light and teasing. “Five hundred paper cranes, huh? You big romantic. I thought you’d only make them if you really w-w-wanted to.”

“And I really did for you, as it turns out,” Mike says, blushing deeply. He squeezes Bill’s hand, still in his own, gazes so adoringly at Bill he knows if the other losers were here they’d take the piss out of him. “I thought I chased you away,” he continues softly. “I thought- I don’t know what I thought. I went out of my mind. I just- I wanted you back.”

“You never lost me, Mikey,” Bill says, and then entangles his hand with Mike’s, gripping so tight Mike feels the hold, right down to his bone. “I was waiting for you. I’ll always wait for you.”

Surrounded by the smell of books, both new and old, the yawning walls of the manor and Bill in his arms, soft and genuine and real, Mike for the first time in twenty seven years starts to feel the aching loneliness within his heart begin to heal.

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't the ship or fandom i typically write for but i've recently gotten back into this ship and this idea of exploring mike's mindset post that last showdown with pennywise would not leave my brain until i wrote it. also i do hope the locations for the road trip make sense but in case there's discrepancies feel free to message me and i'll edit them. 
> 
> as always you can come talk to me on tumblr @ himbomcavoy


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